In addition to the big Opera “hubs” in Norway, Poland and the United States, we also have satellite offices in several other places, including Nice, capital of the Côte d’Azur.

Who crafts Opera for Mac?

The core team developing Opera for Mac is a small and dedicated team of three engineers: Arjan van Leeuwen, the manager of the Mac team, Raul Sanchez and Jacek Oleksy. Arjan hails from the Netherlands, Raul from Spain and Jacek from Poland. They work closely with the rest of the Mac team located in Warsaw and Wroclaw.

They all moved to Nice in 2012 and fell in love with the city. Their small office is part of a co-working space, located right in the city center. It’s a fantastic environment, where people from all kinds of companies and backgrounds sit together, work together and do things like having lunch, coffee and the occasional beer too!

A good balance of work and healthy lifestyle

Arjan says that living in Nice definitely helps in the software development. When he needs time to step back and rethink ideas, it’s always possible to go for a walk in the sun and enjoy a view over the Mediterranean or take a break in the Promenade des Anglais or in the narrow streets of Vieux Nice. Sometimes, it’s during these relaxed moments that the best solutions and ideas pop up!

In his spare time, Jacek loves hiking and biking in the mountains, and living in Nice provides him great opportunities to do just that. Raul is a sports lover and plays on a local football team. He also loves riding his motorcycle on the weekends. Arjan loves visiting small and beautiful towns in the region (and across the border in Italy) with his family.

Arjan, Raul and Jacek are really proud of developing Opera for Mac with a fully native experience, as well as a UI built separately from the Windows and Linux versions. Opera for Mac has been designed and developed specifically for use on OS X.

This allows Opera to have support for great features like Handoff and Notification Center. The UI design is then fitted to the OS X experience through the handiwork of Opera’s UI designers, Jon Hicks and Jonatan Castro, both of whom are dedicated Mac users.

How is your experience with Opera for Mac going? Let us know either by commenting below or by tweeting us via @opera. We’ll be sure the team sees your feedback. 🙂